Market adoption of wireless LAN (WLAN) technology has exploded, as users from a wide range of backgrounds and vertical industries have brought this technology into their homes, offices, and increasingly into the public air space. This inflection point has highlighted not only the limitations of earlier-generation systems, but the changing role WLAN technology now plays in people's work and lifestyles, across the globe. Indeed, WLANs are rapidly changing from convenience networks to business-critical networks. Increasingly users are depending on WLANs to improve the timeliness and productivity of their communications and applications, and in doing so, require greater visibility, security, management, and performance from their network.
As enterprises and other entities increasingly rely on wireless networks, monitoring and management of the components implementing the wireless network environments become critical to performance and security. Heretofore, it has not been recognized how important visibility into all layers of the network protocol is to optimization of network manageability and user performance in wireless LANs (WLANs). Unlike centrally-managed cellular wireless systems, known WLAN solutions use distributed access points to act as bridges between the wired infrastructure and the wireless clients, removing all physical and wireless media access protocol information from the protocol frames that are passed onto the infrastructure network. This results in uncoordinated handoffs of wireless clients moving between access points. An uncoordinated system of access points makes it difficult to manage a large number of access points, because there is no point of coordination. For example, known prior art wireless network systems such as conventional 802.11 WLAN systems provide the initial handshaking, access authentication and access association at a remote node without attention to overall network loading and signal quality.
This type of distributed architecture creates many problems affecting network management, mobility, and performance. Since each wireless LAN access point is a separate managed device, a distributed architecture in general introduces many new managed elements in the network without sufficient attention to their global effects. Since the access points act in their own self-interest and are not aware of the actions taken by surrounding access points, they handle mobility (e.g., handoff actions) as a local event, which significantly increases latency.
U.S. application Ser. Nos. 10/155,938 and 10/407,357, identified above, disclose a hierarchical wireless network architecture that optimizes network management and performance of a relatively autonomously-managed WLAN. According to the system architecture, a central control element (wireless switch) manages and controls one more access elements. These light-weight access elements perform real-time communication functions, such as data transfer and acknowledgements, while the central control element manages the connection between the access element and one or more wireless client devices.
A vital function to the operation of WLANs is roaming—i.e., the handoff of a client from one access point to another as the client roams about the coverage area provided by the wireless network infrastructure. During a handoff event, a wireless client essentially abandons its connection with one access point and establishes a new connection with another, resulting in a small period without connectivity and therefore possible packet loss. A handoff event can be divided into three phases: 1) scanning/probing, 2) re-authentication, and 3) state information transfer. When the signal quality between an access point and a client degrades, the client or mobile station sensing that connectivity has been lost initiates a handoff by scanning available RF channels for access points with which to associate. Scanning for access points can be both a passive mechanism (e.g., detecting beacon frames transmitted by the access points), and an active mechanism (e.g., broadcasting probe responses and receiving probe requests). After selecting an access point identified during the scan, the client or mobile station attempts to associate with the selected access point. In this re-association phase, the wireless client and the selected access point engage in a handshake to establish the connection.
In 802.11 WLANs, a typical handoff may also involve an exchange of messages between the prior and new access point to complete a transfer of physical/link layer connectivity between one access point and another access point. The message exchanges may include the transfer of connection state information, such as authentication credentials, between the prior access point and the new access point as well. The interaction between access points can be accomplished using standard or proprietary protocols. For example, the draft IEEE 802.11F specification provides a recommended general framework for the exchange of connection state information between access points during a client handoff. For example, when a wireless client discovers a new access point, it transmits a re-association message, including the BSSID of the old access point, to the new access point. The new access point uses a mechanism to resolve the address of the old access point and transmits a request for the connection state information of the client. In hierarchical wireless networks, the handoff can occur between two access points managed by the same wireless switch, or between access points managed by different wireless switches. In the former case, the transfer of connection state information between access points is either not required or greatly simplified, as this connection state information is maintained by a common wireless switch. Client handoffs that implicate two wireless switches, however, may require the exchange of wireless connection state information between the wireless switches. While the use of the inter-access point protocol set forth in the draft 802.11F specification to transfer state information between the switches is effective, the mapping of BSSIDs to wireless switch addresses presents configuration overhead, especially for large scale deployments. For example, the 802.11F specification discloses that RADIUS servers may be used to provide the mapping between the BSSID and the wireless switch. Furthermore, the 802.11F specification does not address the situation where a client attempts to re-associate with two switches in alternating succession, or with multiple switches, as it roams about the wireless network environment.
In light of the foregoing, the latency associated with scanning for access points and subsequently associating with a discovered access point may be too large, especially where the QoS required by some network applications is relatively high. Accordingly, a need in the art exists for methods, apparatuses and systems that reduce the latency associated with roaming in wireless networks. Embodiments of the present invention substantially fulfill this need.